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Star Wars opening crawl
.]] Each film in the 'Star Wars' series opens with scrolling text which provides an explanation of the backstory and context of the film. It has become associated with the films and has frequently been parodied. Structure The opening of each film begins with the scrolling text, "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...." in blue, followed by the ''Star Wars logo over a field of stars. The logo then moves away from the camera and subsequently, the text begins with film's episode number and subtitle (with the exception of original release of Star Wars – see below) followed by a three-paragraph summary of the events occurring in the Star Wars Universe immediately prior to the incidents of the film. The text scrolls up and away from the bottom of the screen towards a vanishing point above the center of the screen in a perspective projection. Each piece of scrolling text ends with a four-dot ellipsis, except for Return of the Jedi which has a three-dot ellipsis. When the text has nearly reached the vanishing point it is faded out and the camera tilts down through space to a ship or planet.Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace DVD commentary Episode II: Attack of the Clones is the only film where the camera tilts up after the text. Two typefaces are used in the text, both in yellow: News Gothic for the episode number and main body of the text, and Univers for the title of the film. Several words are in all-capital letters to stress their importance: "DEATH STAR" in A New Hope, "GALACTIC EMPIRE" in Return of the Jedi, and "ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC" in Attack of the Clones. Each line of the text spans the width of the screen when it enters from the bottom. In the "fullscreen" (4:3 aspect ratio for standard-definition television) versions of the films, the full lines of text are cut off on the sides until they have scrolled further onto the screen. As a result, by the time the full lines are visible, the text is much smaller and harder to read. In addition, the viewer also has less time to read it. The animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars is the only theatrically released Star Wars film that does not feature an opening crawl, but instead features a narration of the past events over several clips. Origin Lucas has stated that the opening crawl was inspired by the opening crawls used at the beginning of each episode of the original Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers film serials, which were the inspiration for Lucas to write much of the Star Wars saga.Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith DVD commentary In a 2005 interview, George Lucas described how the final phrasing of the text for A New Hope came about. "The crawl is such a hard thing because you have to be careful that you're not using too many words that people don't understand. It's like a poem. I showed the very first crawl to a bunch of friends of mine in the 1970s. It went on for six paragraphs with four sentences each. Brian De Palma was there...". De Palma helped to edit the text into the form used in the film.Pearlman, Cindy (May 15, 2005). The Force. Chicago Sun-Times. Production According to Dennis Muren, who worked on the six films, crawls on the original trilogy films were accomplished by filming physical models laid out on the floor. The models were approximately 60 cm (2') wide and 1,80 m (6') long. The crawl effect was accomplished by the camera moving longitudinally along the model. It was difficult and time-consuming to achieve a smooth scrolling effect. Furthermore, different versions in other languages (such as German, French and Spanish) were produced by ILM.Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace DVD commentary''Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope'' DVD commentary With the advent of computer-generated graphics, the crawls for the prequel trilogy were achieved much more quickly. The 2004 DVD special edition versions of the original trilogy were later updated with computer-generated crawls as part of their restoration and enhancement. ''Episode IV'' opening crawl The opening crawl in the finished Episode IV is very different from Lucas' original intention. The original text, used in the rough cut he showed to friends and studio executives in February 1977, appears in the Marvel Comics adaptation of the film. When originally released in 1977, the first film was simply titled Star Wars, as 20th Century Fox forbade Lucas to use a subtitle because it could be confusing, since there had been no other Star Wars movies prior to 1977.Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope DVD commentary (2004 edition) In addition, it was not certain if the film would be followed with a sequel. When The Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980, the subtitle "Episode V" appeared above the title card. To match its sequel's crawl, the subtitle "Episode IV: A NEW HOPE" was added for the 1981 re-release of the film where it continued to appear throughout the film's home video releases. The original version, without the subtitle, was not released again until the 2006 limited edition DVDs. References External links *[http://www.starwars.com/ The official Star Wars website] *Episode I: At First Glance - article about the creation of the opening crawl for Episode I Category:Star Wars